As wireless telephony has become more and more prevalent, the ways in which it is used have continued to expand. In recent years, wireless data transmission has increased in popularity and many users wish to be able to use a single wireless telephone, served by a single wireless network, to conduct voice communication or data communication as the need arises. A wireless network offering its users the choice of voice and data communication using the same facilities must be able to simultaneously accommodate voice users and data users. Voice and data users, however, have different needs, constraints and requirements. One particularly important main distinction is that voice users need to maintain a constant rate of communication. Every voice user, while carrying on a conversation, needs to be able to transmit and receive information continuously, maintaining a relatively constant communication rate. Data users, who in the context of this application will be classified as users who are not operating in real time and who are using delay-tolerant applications such as email, file transfer, web browsing or data synchronization applications, can tolerate delay and can easily sacrifice continuous communication in order to maximize the average communication rate, or throughput, achieved. Real-time applications such as audio or video have constraints and requirements that are very similar to those of voice users. All voice users need to be able to transmit all the time, while data users can tolerate being periodically inhibited from transmitting in order to allow the most efficient use of the transmission channel. Allowing all data users to transmit continuously would either require the addition of resources, with corresponding expense, or would interfere with the transmission ability of voice users. Such a circumstance would disadvantage voice users without presenting data users with a corresponding advantage. Moreover, the power consumed by a user transmitting at a fixed rate is inversely proportional to the instantaneous channel gain experienced by that user. Allowing a data user to transmit in circumstances where the data user experienced an insufficient gain would cause the user to consume excessive power. Most wireless network users depend on batteries for power, so excessive consumption resulting from transmission under circumstances providing insufficient gain would waste the user's battery power.
There exists, therefore, a need for a system that will provide a constant transmission rate to voice users while allowing access by data users in a way that maximizes average data throughput and efficiency of power consumption by the data users while minimizing the negative impact of data communication on voice users.